Southampton man loses £200 through AI Facebook scam

Paul Davis is constantly being sent doctored images of celebrities such as Tesla founder Elon Musk, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerburg and actress Jennifer Aniston, which are trying to trick him into thinking he has won a "special prize".

The scammers use the images to tell Southampton-based Paul "not to be afraid", and are trying to convince him to pay an "activation fee" to unlock a non-existent prize of £500,000 and a Range Rover truck.

"I’ve got fake videos from Jennifer Aniston asking me for £200 and saying she loves me," Paul said.

Scammers sent Paul this AI generated certificate to try to convince him that he had won £500,000 and a Range Rover car. (Image: Paul Davis) "I’ve paid £200 and I was bitten. Once bitten, twice shy."

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Paul said the scams are affecting his depression and said he cannot keep taking "that sort of hit", as he gets tens of messages from scammers each day.

"It’s been going on for about five months," he explained.

An AI generated video of Mark Zuckerburg depicted the Facebook founder telling Paul that he had won a prize and that he was not being scammed. (Image: Paul Davis) "I thought people would get into trouble for this, but these people seem to be having a laugh and getting away with it. Someone I know has spent over a grand on Apple gift cards for scammers."

Paul said he wants the people of Southampton to see what lengths scammers will resort to to steal personal information, which can include bank or credit card details.

AI expert Dr Jennifer Williams, of University of Southampton, said that this is a "phishing scam" where an impostor sends unsolicited messages pretending to be celebrities.

Paul was sent this doctored image of Ellie Goulding to try and convince him that he was speaking to the real Ellie Goulding. (Image: Paul Davis) She said that the first goal is to fish for personal information to build a database of potential victims for future attacks.

This scam in particular then uses a neural network-generated image to create a fake prize notification, which in this case is a "certificate from Facebook".

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Dr Williams said: "The scammer would input details like the victim's name (obtained from various sources) into an AI model to generate the image, refining it until it appears convincing.

AI expert Dr Jennifer Williams, who lectures at the University of Southampton. (Image: University of Southampton) "The goal is to get the victim's home address under the guise of "delivering" prizes like a car or a non-existent Facebook Mastercard."

Once a conversation has been started, the scammers often convince victims to buy non-refundable gift cards and send the codes.

Dr Williams said to look out for red flags and noted that Facebook does not give away large sums of money or vehicles.

She explained to look out for odd phrasing, highly pixelated images, phrases like "don't be afraid" which are designed to provoke an emotional response, and different pixelation patterns around names which indicate they were added later.